Israel has committed “genocidal acts” through the systematic destruction of women’s healthcare facilities in Gaza, UN experts said in a major new report on Thursday. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, found that Israel’s systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, coupled with restricted medical supplies, resulted in a surge in maternal deaths, and is therefore tantamount to the crime of extermination.

Dr. Chaim Sheba, who would have a hospital named after him, was obsessive about encouraging childbirth. When women, many of them in financial straits, would request an abortion, he would inject them with distilled water and say that this was part of the procedure. The children born of this fraud were known as "water babies."

Israel has committed “genocidal acts” through the systematic destruction of women’s healthcare facilities in Gaza, UN experts said in a report on Thursday. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, found that Israel’s systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, coupled with restricted medical supplies, resulted in a surge in maternal deaths, and is therefore tantamount to the crime of extermination.